To think a declining birth rate is a good (and inevitable) thing

[OptimismvsRealism]

Article in the times today about the "push for Britain to have more babies" on the basis that a declining population will cause economic shocks.

One of the proposals is "fertility checks in your 20s and education about declining fertility in biology classes".

I mean. Isn't it great that people only have babies if they really, truly want them? And isn't it good to have a smaller human burden on the planet (and fewer humans vying for declining jobs as tech replaces us at most of the things we used to do)?

I don't believe for a second that fertility checks would help anyone. Nobody is out there going "trala I'm 45 and really want five babies but just haven't felt like starting yet"!

The solution, ideally is to have a fertility rate somewhere around the 1.9-2.0 range and let medical advances take up the slack on extending healthy life expectancy as the population slowly declines.

Once you get a fertility rate much below 1.75 you're in trouble.

Isn't that the plot of Idiocracy?! Basically all the clever, well educated people hold off having kids until the economy picks up/they have a good job/enough savings etc but never actually do whereas the stereotypically redneck types have loads, thus generations get more and more stupid
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

Not just the rich liberal countries. Iran's birthrate, for example is lower than Israel's and I would not call China or Russia that rich (per capita) or western.

Even in Africa, the birth rate is falling - and doing so at a faster speed than the Western timeline. The minute you give women education and control over their fertility, they plan their families. Who knew?! And unless the culture pushes you to have a large family (for example, it's seen as a religious duty amongst some orthodox Jewish communities in Israel and as a matter of pride in some parts of Africa), women consistently choose smaller families and space out their kids.

From a social viewpoint, we need to make the burden lighter on women - better maternity care, a reduction of the maternity pay gap, better SEN suppport if the child is disabled, lower cost housing, pushing the CSA to go after the absent fathers...I could keep going on.

We can't expect women to solve this alone. We are not society's safety net. If you try, you end up with women opting out completely (see Japan and South Korea.)

Yeah, but misogynist cultures that don't play well with democracy are tenapenny - I'm worried about how we preserve a liberal culture when liberal cultures seem to have begun a simultaneous fertility death spiral.

@buttnut
100%
My DS birth was so awful DH wants a vasectomy and I'd struggle to have any more due to post birth injuries 5 years on

Overpopulation is the single biggest problem we face. It's driving pollution, deforestation, declining fish stocks, climate change, mass extinction, etc. It has to! How could it not? In 1900 there were a billion humans. By 1960 that had trebled to three billion. It's now eight billion and heading for ten. I'm not much good at maths, but I assume ten billion humans are going to consume more fish than one billion. And ten billion humans are going to cut down more trees, consume more fossil fuels, and pump out more toxic gas as well.

Yes birth rates are declining, but not everywhere. The African birth rate is so high that the African population is going to double – right in the middle of a climate crisis. Also, clever people are working round the clock to invent ways of extending the lifespan. Pretty soon we'll have senolytic drugs, and then medical nanobots and god knows what else. Some predict lifespans of 120 or 130, others believe we'll find ways to halt the ageing process altogether. And these aren't cranks. They're serious people with serious money behind them. So people won't be dying and making room.

If Bill Gates really wanted to help humanity, he'd install a family planning clinic in every village on Earth. Nothing would help Africa more. There is a cure for poverty. It has been tried all over the world and it always works. It's called birth control. If African women only had two children, on average, they'd have more time and money to educate those children. They'd also have more time and money to re-train and pursue a career. Those wicked priests who go round the world's slums preaching against contraception should be arrested for crimes against humanity.

But the thing is if you keep increasing the population this problem will never end and will always be there.

No one is arguing it should be increasing though….

more people on the planet has also been caused by people living longer

The human population is growing due to people living longer. Not because of birthrates, which have been largely stable since the 1970s and are now falling rapidly. We can't do anything ethically about that. We just need to wait for the peak, which is predicted to he a maximum of 11bn people, then a rapid fall, but some predictions are that there will be a rapid decline at 9bn.

It's not the pensions, its the care costs. You may only get £200 a week state pension, but attendance allowance is about £100 if you need carers. Lots of news about the 3.3 million people getting PIP and how unsustainable that is, 1.6 million get attendance allowance. The cost of care homes that can easily outstrip any assets they may have and needs to be state funded.

Almost half of hospital admissions are in those over 65, they occupy over two thirds of inpatient beds. Ultimately over half the cost and time of the front line NHS is taken by people over retirement age.

We've improved life expectancy but not necessarily the quality and independence of that life so more and more are needing these services and we may not have enough younger people to pay for them.

Immigration?
All the other countries will be competing for working age immigrants.
When they get to this country they will tend to adopt the norms of the culture and not have children.
I think partly it's because women are no longer prepared to put up with being left to do all the hard unpaid work involved with having children, and men are not prepared to take up any of the slack. They still want to live life for themselves & not make sacrifices!

Tbh they are not a big fan of Bill Gates over that neck of the woods. Can’t see him being welcome to be honest.

A declining birth rate doesn’t need to mean a declining population. If we are running short of workers to pay tax and help support the elderly there is a great source of people who are mostly willing to work and happy to come here! They just need to be allowed to work.

as for the falling birth rate I’m sure cost of living is a major factor. Who can afford £100 a day nursery costs on top of rising food and energy bills and stagnation of wages? Politicians could also sort that out.

Constantly increasing birth rates is a disaster in every way. Declining birth rates and more immigration would be very much better.

If you care at all about the economic outlook of this country or if you want our children / grandchildren to have lives which are at least as good as the ones you have had then you would think declining birth rate is a big problem.

the solution is obviously migration but no one likes immigrants apparently so we’re screwed.

Pensioner here. I get the grand sum of £159 a week ( paid for by todays workers)
I started work when I was 14 at weekends. Got a proper job at 17 and apart from a short break to have one child, worked full time until I was 66. Presumably during that time I was paying for other retired people to have their pensions?
But oh my, don't people seem to resent the fact that people like me are getting money that they pay for! All these elderly people expecting to be looked after, whatever is the world coming to?

What you are missing from the above is that in the 60s there were 5 workers to 1 pensioner, now it’s 3:1 and forecast soon to be 2:1. We already have more over 65 yr olds than under 15 yr olds, how is that sustainable?

it’s one reason why pension age is moving out despite healthy life expectancy not increasing.

No, it's not good at all. Although it is inevitable the whole time sperm counts continue to drop and people continue to believe the earth is either currently on fire or is going to burn up in the next decade.

If you look at the big picture it's a good thing.

Temporarily, there will be 3 or 4 generations whereby there aren't enough young people to support the older ones but obviously that will even itself out in time. It's just unfortunate for the people who have to be old with limited young populations to support them.

The immigration angle is interesting as much of the west will be competing for immigrants. Will we be the most attractive?

Literally noone is saying that though. We are just pointing out that if the current trends continue, then it simply won't be possible for us as a society to fund pensioners, nor will we have enough people to provide the health and social care that many of them need.

It's not about resenting you, or attacking you for receiving money. It's about addressing a structural problem that cannot continue to be ignored.

The problem is, that when people try and discuss these matters, there are inevitably people like you who entirely misunderstand the point and cry "ageism".

when all countries are short of young people there wont be enough immigrants to fill the gap

@AllIWantIsACuppa its so frustrating because there can never be a proper debate. I want the government to address it as I’ll be old soon!

Constantly increasing birth rates is a disaster in every way.

Good it’s not a thing then 🤦‍♀️

Agree! I find the misanthropy on these threads pretty depressing and counter to the actual history of humanity. I was reading to my son about the stone age and early humans lived and I find it so humbling that our species developed from that to this, an unbroken like of people not just surviving but innovating and shaping their environment into something our ancestors could never have imagined. It's incredible.

The planet isn't dying: the planet is becoming an increasingly hostile environment to support the current apex species, which at this point in time is homo sapiens.

We will, of course, eventually become extinct and something else will take our place.

The planet itself will be fine and will reconfigure: what we have to do in the meantime is find a comfortable way to live out whatever amount of time we have left, whether that's hundreds or thousands of years.